


Nightswimming

by chucksauce



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, Skinny Dipping, canon-compliant Mary-death, canon-divergent, post-s3 spec (a little), we're just going to pretend that they knew each other before St. Bart's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-04 12:36:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1779361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucksauce/pseuds/chucksauce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the life of him, John couldn’t remember whose idea it was, but they were both starkers swimming in the dirty little pond on the back end of the Pritchards’ farm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightswimming

**Author's Note:**

> Based on an anon prompt from tumblr: _"any ship and skinny dipping (if you want i mean idk if you want to i love your fics excuse me)"_
> 
> Well, Nonny, hope you enjoy. <3
> 
> Thanks to [a-cumberbatch-of-cookies](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tishy19) and [surelymeretricious](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SurelyMeretricious/pseuds/SurelyMeretricious) for the beta and encouragement.

**Present-Day**  
It isn’t uncommon, the few times they have rented a car, for Sherlock to insist they pass the entirety of a trip sans radio. Nor is it uncommon for John to pass the ride in silent contemplation of the man beside him, wondering what he is about. Tonight is no different. Sherlock stares at the road before them in singleminded focus, sure, but there’s something withdrawn in the way he’s avoided John’s questions this whole trip, the calculating gleam of uncertainty as the lights of London fade away and they roll out toward the country.  
  
It isn’t until they have left the city entirely, when the streetlights have faded and the highway stretches long and dark, that Sherlock shifts in his seat to pull a photograph, old and dog-eared, from his trouser pocket. He is without Belstaff, as even Sherlock must admit the weather in late summer is too oppressive for such a dramatic article of clothing. He bends the photo slightly with his free hand and props it on the dash.  
  
“What’s this?” John leans forward and plucks the photograph from its perch.  
  
It’s a photo John hasn’t seen in years, one he didn’t even realise Sherlock still had, really. When the sting of tears nearly blinds him, he blinks quickly and prays Sherlock is too busy navigating to notice.  
  
In the picture, one of John’s arms is slung around Sherlock’s neck, the other one obviously holding the camera.  He happened to capture Sherlock, who was usually a scowling  prat as a teenager, laughing uncontrollably. Sherlock’s hair was much shorter, close-cropped as per the dictates of his parents, and John’s face was softer, before the military had trimmed all the baby fat from his frame.  
  
And then the point of this trip becomes clear: it is not for a case of murder or intrigue, but something else entirely. John’s stomach gives a funny little leap.  
  
  
**Late August, 1998**  
“This is absurd, John,” Sherlock scowled. “What is the point of this little adventure?”  
  
“Hush, you. I’m just trying to get you out of your head. You’ve been unbearable this week.”  
  
“Where are you taking me?”  
  
“To the back edge of the Prichards’ farm. Don’t worry, the old man doesn’t bother much, and I’ve been going for years.”  
  
They trudged on in silence, through the forest behind John’s neighborhood. The lambent glow of fireflies was beginning to peter out for the night, their mating ritual drawing to a close as the moon grew high, cold and distant despite the summer’s heat. Crickets and cicadas chirped incessantly. The intermittent burp of toads marked the beat.  
  
John felt bad--he had worried, in the back of his mind, about how bored Sherlock might be if he came to visit him during the summer. Aldershot wasn’t nearly the bustling metropolis Sherlock was accustomed to, having spent much of the past few years living in London with his mum. It had taken a full week, but here he was on day three of a full strop. Even John’s parents had begun to notice.  
  
“Whatever this is, it’s not going to work,” Sherlock said after a while.  
  
John drew in a deep breath and glanced over to his best mate. Summer-thick foliage largely obscured the full moon, but every so often a silvery shaft would pierce the canopy. One such caught Sherlock just then in relief, setting his pale skin aglow, his short black curls shining like spun onyx. Then another step forward, and he was once more obscured by heavy shadow. John looked forward again, just barely able to pick out their path, and that only from years of experience.  
  
Sometimes he forgot just how beautiful his friend could be. It caught him off balance every time, and John burned with guilt. He wasn’t supposed to look at his mates like that. Sherlock didn’t see him that way, certainly.  
  
“We’ll see,” John murmured. “Just wait for it, Sherlock.”  
  
  
  
**Present**  
“I don’t think this is going to work, Sherlock.” John draws in a long breath through his nose, swallowing hard to work against the knot forming in his throat. Beyond the car, the waning moon does little to illuminate the heath over which their road winds.  
  
It’s been so long, so long since that photograph was taken. Ages and eons. They had lived through a lot in the last fifteen or so years--uni and the military dragging them continents apart, serendipity and St. Bart’s bringing them back together before Reichenbach and Mary Morstan almost broke their bond irreparably.  
  
John is more broken these days than before Sherlock had found him after the military. So while he understands exactly where they are going, exactly what they are about to do, he aches for the memory of that much youth, that night of laughing and feeling more alive than he ever had before. That yearning twists his heart tight with guilt. This little trip won’t make John forget Mary. Nor the child he’d lost when she died.  
  
It is too much to hope for another Sherlockian miracle, and John well knows.  
  
But rather than offer a rebuttal, Sherlock merely lifts his free hand to John’s shoulder, gives it one firm squeeze, and drops it back down to the gear shifter, never taking his eyes from the road.  
  
  
  
**1998**  
“You dragged me all the way out here to build a campfire and drink pinched whisky?” Sherlock’s raised eyebrow was scornful, his crossed arms and the line of his body illustrating whatever withering pronouncement he was cooking up in that bloody head of his.  
  
John shrugged, and Sherlock’s mood did nothing to deter his smile. “More or less. C’mon, Sherlock. You’ve got to unwind sometime. Help me gather some wood.”  
  
Sherlock grumbled all the while, but did as he was instructed. John hoped it was merely his way of saying thank you. Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes later they had a chipper little fire going, right there at the bank of a pond on the opposite side of the woods from John’s house. It wasn’t enough to cast much heat, thankfully, but enough to light their area. Orangey firelight drove back the humid press of night, and within its glow Sherlock sat cross-legged in his pyjamas, his arms still crossed, his back ramrod straight.  
  
John slid the aforementioned bottle of booze from his knapsack--indeed, it wasn’t just any pilfered grog, but the bottle of Macallan 12 his sister kept hidden in her closet. She’d already gone back to the city for Uni, but as luck would have it, she’d forgotten to take it with her. John unscrewed the lid and put the bottle to his lips. He gave Sherlock a waggle of his eyebrows, and took a pull.  
  
It burned on its way down, but not as much as the stuff he’d gotten the last time he’d rummaged her closet the Christmas before. He winced, having not brought anything to chase it with, and offered the bottle to Sherlock.  
  
Sherlock stared at it a long moment, rolled his eyes, and accepted the bottle. He tossed it back without hesitation and then made a face. “The 27 is better.”  
  
“Git,” John had chuckled.  
  
If the fire burned a little brighter after that, John wasn’t one to complain. By the time he remembered the disposable camera he’d stuffed into his knapsack, they were well and truly drunk.  
  
  
  
**Present**  
They sit on the shore in silence, shoulder to shoulder. John tugs at the collar of his shirt, a bead of sweat rolling down between his shoulder blades.  Neither of them have bothered with a fire, as the Pritchards’ farm had been sold a decade before to make way for a housing development; even torches would draw too much attention. A thin, very thin ring of trees separates the pond from the outer fences of the neighborhood, which had turned the area into a nature walk for its homeowners.  
  
“I know it’s not the same, John,” Sherlock murmurs into the night. “But I hoped maybe the trip would help.”  
  
For the second time that night, John’s eyes burn, but this time he doesn’t blink them away. He smiles into his grief, until he feels the tears ready to spill across his cheeks. He’s never let anyone see that before, not even Sherlock. But now, what good would it do to hide?  
  
Awash in his memories, he wishes Sherlock had remembered the Macallan. He thinks about how different things were now, than the last time they’d come here. The worries he’d had that night were nothing to what he feels and thinks now. How could he have ever guessed this is where his life would lead?  
  
Sherlock shifts, and pulls something from his pocket, unscrewing it before handing it to John. It is an old hip flask, warmed from the heat of Sherlock’s body. Even still, John knows what's in it before he takes a sip, and can’t decide if he wants to laugh or cry. The noise that escapes him is a  little of both.  
  
Half the flask later, the moon is brighter, its distorted reflection on the water’s surface nothing short of brilliant. John purses his lips, willing himself to keep silent on everything knocked loose in his heart of late.  
  
Despite himself, when Sherlock had re-entered his life that fateful afternoon at Bart’s, John had remembered with awkward fondness the way he’d felt at seventeen. But time and distance had given him the space to ignore the past’s draw, and he’d avowed to start over with Sherlock. They were friends, yes, and John could be content with that.  
  
It hadn’t been until Sherlock’s “death” that the dam broke, and John realised what a huge mistake he’d made, wasting time on denial. But then there was Mary, whom he’d clung to as a pillar. When he finally admitted to himself that he loved her, it felt like a bittersweet betrayal, but one he could only carry so far. Sherlock was dead and gone, had been for eighteen months.  
  
When Sherlock came forward six months later, no one questioned why John’s world had been turned on its head. And with the way he’d insisted helping with the wedding, the way he’d been nothing short of perfect the entire time, John saw too little too late he wasn’t the only one for whom the past two years had been heartbreakingly enlightening.  
  
And now, now that Mary is d--gone, where does that leave them? Tiptoeing around the spectre of unfinished business, out of respect for the departed?  
  
Because now? Now he knows, fully and unavoidably, how much he loves Sherlock; how much, to his surprise, Sherlock seems to return the sentiment unstinting. But each time in the past three months he’s let himself think on it, a cold, hateful little voice in his conscience whispers, _You’re being unfaithful to Mary. You’re brushing off the woman who died trying to give you a child._  
  
John shakes his head to clear his thoughts, turns the flask up.  
  
“Come on, John,” Sherlock murmurs, breaking John’s inebriated wallowing. “I’m sure even you can guess what comes next.”  
  
When Sherlock grasps his hand and pulls him gently to his feet, John allows it.  
  
  
  
**1998**  
For the life of him, John couldn’t remember whose idea it was, but they were both starkers swimming in the dirty little pond on the back end of the Pritchards’ farm. He giggled helplessly, so hard he almost couldn’t swim. And Sherlock, dear lord. Sherlock kept insisting on doing cannonballs from the little dock, experimenting with angle and pose to produce the largest splash, letting loose whoops of excitement that would surely bring even crodgety old Mr. Pritchard running.  
  
“Shh, you git, you’ll get us caught,” John managed between peals of laughter, doing his best just to stay afloat.  
  
Sherlock swam over, his skinny frame surprising in its strength as each sure stroke brought him closer to John, to the centre of the pond. When he was only a few feet away, he halted, treading water. He snorted, and sent a splash of water right for John’s head. “That’s if your idiotic guffawing doesn’t get us caught first.”  
  
“Guffawing? Who actually says that word?” John cupped his hands together to send a bigger splash at Sherlock. The water echoed loudly against itself, enough to overpower the noise of the crickets and frogs that still sang into the night. Sherlock ducked beneath the water, and shortly John felt strong, thin fingers grasp his shoulders, push him down under. He barely had time to clasp his nose shut before water engulfed him.  
  
And Sherlock’s proximity, well, it was distracting enough that John nearly forgot to suck in his breath when he did so; all he could think was, _he’s naked. I’m very naked. We’re both so very, very not clothed._  
  
As he wriggled free, his free hand grasping blindly at what felt like Sherlock’s elbow, he thought, _But I’ve been skinny dipping loads of time with Mike and the others. It’s no big deal. Why should it matter this much?_  
  
But then amidst his monologue his head broke the surface and John drew in a deep lungful, Sherlock laughing and grappling him like they were twelve years old, carefree and silly with it.  
  
Sherlock caught him in a headlock, though his body was angled so that the only points of contact were chest to shoulders, arm to neck. “Race you to the dock,” he grunted, and shifted his weight to pull backwards, swinging his legs forward to put the bottoms of his feet to John’s back. He released his hold as he pushed off of John to propel himself dockward. By the time John spun around in the water he was backstroking smugly across the pond.  
  
“Ow, you arse!” John called with a laugh, and launched himself forward. His heart raced as his arms sliced through the water, his blood singing in his veins. For years afterward he would acknowledge only to himself that this was the only time he’d felt truly alive, up until getting shipped to Afghanistan. As he drew abreast of Sherlock he called, “Winner gets to make the loser do something truly stupid.”  
  
With that they both swam as hard as they could, though in the end Sherlock’s long limbs and years of training at city pools won out. He slapped a wooden support beam jutting from the water and cried out, “I win!”  
  
John, who wasn’t more than a stroke behind him, groaned good-naturedly. “All right, all right. You win. So what do I have to do?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You win. Therefore, I have to do something stupid as the forfeit.” John circled around to the other side of the beam, his head only a foot shy of the dock’s underside; it had been a dry summer and the water level was lower than usual.  
  
The difference in the shadow beneath the dock and out in the open, though, became more apparent once he’d done so. What little light there was illuminated Sherlock like some kind of water nymph, ghostly pale, his cheeks and lips ruddy from exertion. Inexplicably, John felt his heart kick up a notch, and it had nothing to do with the wrestling nor the race.  
  
“So now we’re playing truth or dare?” Sherlock asked, his tone doubtful.  
  
John blushed, thankful for the cover of the dock. Of course Sherlock would find that game childish, moronic. John could almost hear him saying, _It’s a juvenile means of social measure, wherein cowardly players goad each other to do things of an illegal or sexual nature because they’re utterly unsure of their ability to do so without the framework of the game._  
  
“I mean we don’t have to,” John started. “Never mind, it’s stu--”  
  
But then Sherlock swam forward beneath the shadow of the dock, less than a foot away from him. John’s heart kicked up to triple-time against his ribcage, the air suddenly too thick with humidity to breathe. He tried to look anywhere but straight ahead, but Sherlock’s face was so close it demanded his attention, those eyes just catching a reflection of the light off the water, the rest of his face a work in shadow-on-shadow. John gulped in a breath.  
  
The corners of Sherlock’s mouth twitched, those eyes darting to study John’s face. His voice came out in a whisper, barely audible above the echoes of water lapping beneath the dock. “What if I dared you to kiss me?”  
  
  
  
**Present**  
The water is cooler than he remembers it being, for all that it’s the same time of year as it was the last time they’d been here. A soft breeze breathes across the surface of the little pond, holding the promise of September coming soon. Even now that John is a much more seasoned drinker than he was at seventeen, he should know better than to underestimate the power of well-aged Scotch.  
  
His extremities tingle with pleasant warmth, and for the first time in the three months since Mary and the baby--since, well, since they’d been _gone_ \--there’s a fire in his gut that burns with the will to be alive, to persist and feel and just let it all flow through him. He is John Watson, after all, and he has known a great many kinds of hardship in his life. The small, frail voice that begs for him to simply continue had grown stronger with each pull at the flask, and though his fingers fumbled somewhat with his buttons and his shoes and his flies, he’d continued, until now. He treads the water lazily,  naked in a little pond just outside a suburb in Aldershot.  
  
He knows that if he’d been sober, he’d have talked himself out of it before he’d even begun with the first button.  
  
John feels grateful then, that Sherlock is there and at least minimally more sober than himself, the two of them floating in lazy circles, side by side in a slow orbit, just the way they’d done most of their lives.  
  
Because that was their relationship in a nutshell, wasn’t it? Their orbits may have been erratic, drawing close and then moving unbelievably far apart, but the cycle always continued. And where their trajectories collided were the best parts of John’s life.  
  
He closes his eyes, sucks in a deep breath, and pushes up off the floor of the shallow pond, floating on his back. When he opens his eyes, the stars swim overhead, brilliant pinpoints millions of light-years away. An old song blossoms in memory, and he hums it softly.  
  
Somehow it is comforting to find himself, his whole world to be so small in the face of a universe so vast. He knows some people find it terrifying, this sort of infinitesimal hold they have on reality, but in his inebriated state John believes that the stars don’t care about his problems; the vast and inky cosmos will never remember him. It allows him to take comfort then, in enfolding himself in the here-and-now, in a place outside of time and free of the guilt of the waking world.  
  
When he closes his eyes again he hears Sherlock’s voice nearby, echoing close on the water. “I can’t tell which is worse, John, your ability to hold a tune, or your drunken philosophising. Philosophisising? Philosising? You know what I mean.” A breathy, flippant chuckle follows.  
  
_Shit_ , John thinks. _Did I say all that aloud? Maybe I’m more drunk thank I’d thought. Or Sherlock isn’t as sober as I’d hoped._ And still, he finds that it’s perfectly fine.  
  
“Shut it, you,” he calls back good-naturedly.  
  
Rather than an answer, John hears a loud splash, followed by continual slow splashing. He opens his eyes to find Sherlock swimming for the dock, which has changed little despite the long years.  
  
“What is it?” John calls, as twin thoughts occur to him. The first is, _Is he really doing what I think he’s doing?_ The second is a line from the song he remembered only moments before: _Nightswimming / deserves a quiet night..._  
  
So he lets his feet sink back to the silt before kicking off, his erratic orbit gravitating back toward Sherlock. He recalls with stunning clarity the way this felt last time, the way the water churned then as he only now sluices through it with placid determination.  
  
_It’s not like years ago_ , John thinks with a smile, those old lyrics once again finding all too much synchronicity with his life at current.  
  
When John draws close to the dock, Sherlock’s curls are plastered to his forehead, longer now than they were back then. Though the years have left their mark on his face, too, John finds him just as stunning as he had at seventeen.  
  
When John speaks, he hopes to god he hasn’t misread all of this. But, he temporises, if he has he’s surrounded by water. He could just drown himself. Even still, his voice is softer, more unsure than he would’ve hoped. “Looks like you won the race.”  
  
Sherlock, grasping the round support beam loosely with those long fingers, shifts until he is partially blocked behind it. Silence, more than four seconds and barely less than an eternity, stretches out; John thinks to himself, _Shit, I have misread this whole bloody thing. Now I have to drown myself before--_  
  
“Does that mean I get to claim a forfeit?” Sherlock’s words are voiceless, only breath shaped into syllables, barely echoing off the acoustics of water and wood. His face is hidden in the shadow of the dock, and John finds himself pining for the moon, wishing he could see Sherlock’s face properly in its light just now.  
  
  
  
  
**1998**  
“You dare me to what?” John asked, more surprised than anything, but as his voice rang off the water and against the wooden dock surrounding them, he heard just how sharply his voice has powered his question.  
  
It was no surprise then, when Sherlock jumped back like he’d been slapped. “I was joking,” he said a smidge too quickly. “Just a joke. See how silly truth or dare is? If you’d taken me seriously, you would have done something truly stupid, indeed.”  
  
And the blush that had been riding John earlier was nothing compared to what it was in that moment; he was immeasurably thankful the dock shielded him from Sherlock. But for a split second, he _had_ thought that--  
  
“Yeah, no problem,” he heard himself saying. “You’re right.”  
  
“Hey!” a voice called from far off, and John spun around to see the silhouette of old Mr. Pritchard, his single-barrel .12 gauge broken open and resting across the crook of his elbow. “Hey there!”  
  
John turned back to Sherlock, to find that his friend had gone wide-eyed and was grinning from ear to ear. His own heart had started racing for an altogether different reason now, and as the adrenaline flooded his system he let loose a small, manic giggle.  
  
“Time to go!” he whispered, and they both kicked off, racing for the shore. They didn’t dare look back; John was absolutely certain he’d see Pritchard loading up his gun, snapping the barrel and the action back together and taking aim.  
  
The splashing receded as they scrambled onto land, and they hastily snagged their belongings from the banked fire, Mr. Pritchard yelling still in the distance.  
  
It wasn’t until the morning that John realised he’d forgotten his shirt at the water’s edge, but the night’s adventure seemed too surreal to speak of.  
  
  
  
  
**Present**  
“Does this mean I get to claim a forfeit?”  
  
Sherlock’s words hang heavy in the space between them. Despite the cool breeze, the air is too humid to breathe properly.  
  
Water all around, and yet John’s mouth goes dry as he nods in affirmation and extends his hand. When Sherlock glides forward to take it, John is reminded oddly of the peculiar dance between two stars before collision: eons pass as they come in closer, circling round one another, and each time they strike before the final impact it is merely in glancing blows that only set their course more surely, guaranteeing that final conflation. And so it is with John and Sherlock, entering those final moments before their lips meet, finally and for the first time in the epochs they’ve circled round another.  
  
Seventeen was lifetimes ago, and yet here and now it feels like no time has passed at all.

  
Sherlock is inches from him now, and even in the weak moonlight John can read his face easily: ruddy, full lips parted only barely, head tilted somewhat as he watches John carefully. When John snakes a tentative hand upward to brush through Sherlock’s sopping curls, Sherlock’s eyes flutter shut, and John tugs him down for a kiss.  
  
His lips are cool and taste much like the pond, but when they part-- _oh_. He tugs at Sherlock’s bottom lip; all is heat, the molten interior of the sun compared to the water-chilled exterior, with traces of Scotch. Sherlock’s body drifts closer, John’s arms sinking to wrap one about his waist, the other about his shoulders, until they are flush together, and had John been a younger man, he would have known exactly what would happen next.  
  
But he is not; he is a veteran and a widower twice, if Mrs. Hudson is to be believed. He is a man who has drank deep from the well of grief, and lived to hate its bitter aftertaste.  
  
So rather than the rush of lust he would typically expect, this moment now, entwined with Sherlock naked in a semi-public pond, he feels like he is home and he is whole in a way that he hasn’t felt in a long time; a circuit completed.  
  
And it’s that, that realisation, that finally breaks him. Right here was the comfort he’d been searching for as long as he could remember.  
  
_How did I let twenty years slip by?_  
  
Later on, there will be time for the ride home, where John will rest his hand on Sherlock’s at an opportune moment; there will be time, all the time in the world for fumbling in the safe semi-light of their front-room, of exploration and lust and laughter. But right now, right now John is merely thankful it’s a quiet night and that no one comes to interrupt them now as they pick up where they left off all those years ago. Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.

**Author's Note:**

> I really enjoy making friends with strangers on the internet. Come by and say hi!
> 
>   * [**My Fandom Tumblr**](http://chucksauce.tumblr.com) for all manner of crying about fictional characters and laughing at shitposts
>   * **[My Fic Rec Blog](http://spoilersauce.tumblr.com)** , if you're into multifandom recs.
>   * **[Under-London](http://under-london.com/)** , the original serialized novel I'm working on for cheap-as-free!
>   * **[My Twitter](http://twitter.com/chucksauce221)** , where I basically live when I'm not writing...
> 



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